When we were little, we thought that by the year 2000 we’d be driving around flying cars. Fail.

When we were little, we imagined science driving us into a high-tech area of automation and robots. Fail.

When we were little, we thought of technology and the future as cold and mega-mechanic. Super ultra-fail.

Most of our perceptions on technology and the future have been way off. Luckily for us, the truth in the future and high technology is anything but cold. Luckily for us, we were wrong about technology driving us apart.

In truth, technology hasn’t been driven by scientists as much as we thought. As surprising as it may seem, technology has been driven by entrepreneurs — very young ones, at that.

There is no scientist within the founders of what I affectionately refer to as GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple). Garage startups and originally starting small and very niche, GAFA shows us that most of the biggest innovations in consumer-facing technology could have been developed by anyone.

Even better still, these technologies have brought us closer together. We can watch grandkids grow up from a continent away. We can catch up with friends from across the world. We can make new friends and build businesses from remote locations. We can attend MIT or multiple other elite educational institutions — they are only a click a way.

What is most important is that what starts online does not stay online.